I made a New Year’s resolution to exercise every day, which is easy to promise from the couch, while nothing hurts and the body is still on my side. I’d been going to the gym, but casually, the way people say they “keep in touch” but mean only at birthday parties.

My body treats exercise as a personal attack. I go in thinking I’ll feel better. I leave feeling older, weaker and paying monthly for the privilege.

Every rep feels like an argument I’m losing. The weights are winning. The treadmills — have you noticed this? — whirr with the resignation of people who have accepted that “three times a week” was always an aspirational lie.

The resolution collapses the moment it encounters a bad day. By the second week, a buffet is suddenly therapeutic. Wine is fruit. And the Marlboro reds I had promised to quit are quietly reclassified, by me, as an “herb.”

When you quit smoking, cold turkey, time suddenly becomes very long. Your hands feel unemployed and furious. They tell you how many years you gain by quitting, but never how many minutes you’ll need to kill.

Smoking is a socially acceptable way to be alone in public. You step outside, no questions. You come back, no explanations. Quitting means I had to face those moments raw. Without anesthesia.

It’s hardest after a meal, and again when a drink asks for company. A cigarette is dessert for people who hate joy.

I’ve always admired people who quit decisively. I don’t trust myself that way. So, I wait for help, preferably printed on the package, and choose as if one graphic warning might finally make quitting feel official.

I want my final cigarette without an audience of organs: diseased lungs, rotting feet, a baby who looks disappointed to be born into this. The photos don’t say “don’t smoke.” Instead: “This is what you’ll look like when people stop visiting.” Someone decided these were the images worth repeating. I wonder whether he sleeps well. Probably not.

I appreciate that the government believes I am capable of reading and ignoring at the same time, assuming that I’m a visual learner and that logic is stronger than addiction.

I stand at the counter pretending to be casual while quietly panicking that the cashier might notice how invested I was in the outcome. I decided to surrender the choice, waiting for the right one to find me, like dating, religion — whatever pack the lady hands me, I’d take.

If it was gangrene, I’d smoke my way through it dutifully, the way you finish food you didn’t order but don’t want to waste.

I’d come back another day, trusting probability to eventually hand me tooth loss. Or infertility. Over premature birth, it felt like the proof of values I hadn’t lost yet.

Though tooth loss still allows for small talk. You can work it into a story, and it’s explainable, without lowering your voice, to strangers in line. You get to say things like, “Oh, I can’t chew that at this angle,” which sounds wise instead of doomed.

Gangrene? Ends it. People stop listening and start looking at your feet.

Tooth loss feels earned. Like wrinkles. Like saying “when I was younger” and realizing no one argues with you anymore. And if I’m going to quit smoking something, I want it to be something that still lets me smile, strategically, from the other side.